That’s the debt most borrowers face, whether they’re trying to figure out how much principal to pay on their credit card debts, the car loans for their sedans, trucks, and SUVs, or the ungodly amounts they’ll be paying back on their mortgages or refinancing for a second mortgage.

Therefore, the fixed-rate loan is the sort of debt most people stress about. Since it’s often difficult and time consuming to sit down at the desk and calculate the best way to pay back old debts, having a helpful phone application to do the trick is an easier, less stressful way to handle your finances.

You can plan for your future economic well-being simply sitting on the subway heading to work, or while you’re waiting for you date to show up.

For the record, I’ll be focusing only on the operating systems for iPhone smartphones and iPad tablet computers today. I intend on revisiting this question in the near-future to dicsuss Android phone apps, because every consumer demographic has to account for what they’ve borrowed. Today, we talk about the iOS apps for personal finance.

Financial Assistant Apps

The “financial assistant app” works as a kind of aggregator, collecting information from all your savings and money market accounts and placing them in one location for your convenience. This might come from your bank account, investment accounts, credit card statements, and monthly bills. This information isn’t manually added like the budget trackers I talked about the other day, but instead is collated. This might cause lag time if your creditors or utility companies don’t send out their billing data right away, but many of these concerns can be rectified if you set up your preferences the right way.

You might not be comfortable having a mobile phone application being able to log into your various cash accounts and access your information. Certainly, if you hand your application password to someone, that’s going to be a problem, but that would be in any case. Aggregator tech has had more than a decade to perfect security holes and it’s proven to be reliable. Once you log out, the information is permanently deleted from your smartphone.

Personal Assistant Premium is an application from Pageonce which tracks all personal financial accounts. PersonalAssistant Premium allows you to add accounts to your settings from your iPhone. Setting up an account is simple and quick, while you’ll be able to include payments for your cellphone bill and any uses of your Amazon account. In a lot of ways, this product helps you keep a closer eye on your many cash transactions, which should help you spot identity theft easier than otherwise. The term “premium” describes the paid service, which offer more functionality and the ability to navigate without seeing ads and other annoyances. If you go with the free version, you’ll see advertisements at the bottom of the page and have a little less information overall.

Mint Personal Finance App by Mint Com helps you track your money, budget your monthly finances, and manage any accounts you have. Mint is meant to give you fast and easy access to account levels, bank balances, and other data sources. Mint is handy and useful, but you might not like that you have to register at Mint.com to have use of this option. You’ll notice when you log into the site account that it’s got a lot more functionality than the mobile application, so this download still has a ways to go. Still, it’s a good start for on-the-go business types looking to manage their finances while to and from work.

Loan Calculator Apps

MyPayment by Simpaddico allows you to calculate repayment of the loans you have, getting a better idea of how the amortization process for each loan will play out. Like so many of the lending calculator programs, you’ll be able to use “what if” technology to see what happens if you pay back a certain amount per month.

My Loan Calculator by CalcNexus.com lets borrowers figure up their fixed-rate interest payments, including the ability to hold three different loans at a time. This program lets you load in several variables and spit out an additional variable, such as payment, term, loan amount, and interest rate. Like the what-if programs, you can add more principal to your payments to see how this changes the balance of the loan. While you’ll need the app for your iPhone, you can also use the same program on the CalcNexus website (or use that site to test-drive the application).

Mortgage Calculator by SVT Software LLC is useful for potential homeowners, buyers, sellers, mortgage brokers, and realtors. If you’re a real estate broker who doesn’t like doing the math in your head, this application handles all the math work for you right away. While it’s called a mortgage calculator, you can also use it for fixed rate loans like maxed out credit cards and basic car loan payments. Users can input variables like insurance costs, monthly HOA fees, property taxes, and whatever else becomes an issue. MortgageCalculator is optimized for retina displays and multitasking, supports app-switching, and has a high resolution feature.

People using this feature can save loans you’ve been working on for later, has accurate data entry features, and an email quote function. Use the amortization table to look over your pametn schedule, decide on proper principal, and decide on the payment level your loan needs. You can back up your data for safekeeping for your iOS device with the iTunes file sharing interface. I should mention this is another great app designed by Steve Tran, whose company I’ve mentioned several times, but I’ve never discussed in person. Steve Tran is located in Greenacres, Florida and should not be confused with the French Canadian actor nor the classic kickboxer of the same name.

Loan Calculator Pro by SVT Software LLC is another financial calculator optimized for iOS which helps you calculate fixed rate loans such as credit card debt, auto loan information, or home mortgage loans. Track extra payments, see the interest you owe, and make fast calculations in instants. The SVT Loan Calculator was a Top 10 Finance App of the Year for 2010 on the iTunes websites. Both this and the above application are available for $0.99.

Apple Phone and Table Applications for Loan Calculations

These should get you figuring out the best way to pay back the loans you took out. While most people have their head screwed-on straight when it comes to their home and car debts, it’s often the credit card payments that give people so much trouble. When you borrow for a residence or vehicle, you tend to have it in your head you’ve taken out a big debt. Since borrowing from Visa, Mastercard, and Amex is like stealing from the cookie jar, you often have no idea how many cookies you’ve eaten. These iTunes operating systems applications help make the cookie jar a little more transparent, so you know what the damage is. Good luck paying off your fixed-rate debts.

Don’t get me wrong; I love the applications which help me find the right movie theater or even gives me film reviews, but with this ever-more-complex world we’re living in, I want an app which clarifies things and makes them less complicated.

It probably doesn’t surprise my readers that I’ve researched a number of personal finance apps that help me keep track of my spending habits. Setting up a household budget is essential in the 2010′s, because you simply will not know how much you spend and, more to the point, how much you have to spend if you don’t.

Most of these applications should work with your standard mainstream tablet computers, iPhones, Android phones, and other smartphones. I place these in two different categories (budget trackers and spending/saving programs), but feel free to mix-and-match them to give yourself the maximum benefit from these time-saving budget savers.

Budget Tracker Apps

The Ace Budget application from SVT Software is a good all-purpose financial starter kit program that helps mothers, fathers, and singles track heir basic expenses and compare it against your income and other wealth. In other words, Ace-Budget is a basic budgeting software tool. This tech is easy-to-read and easy to follow, while offering email data, spreadsheet exports, and even shared information with any other iPhone user. This helps you and your spouse get on the same page and maintain real-time budgetary coordination. If you don’t mind inputting data yourself, AceBudget is a great way to maintain an overview of your household finances. Remember to back up your Windows SyncDocs client on a laptop or tablet.

HomeBudget by Anishu is another basic program which you might prefer. HomeBudget has a bill tracking feature which is handy and allows you to list all bills while allowing you to maintain your account balances and account for all your various other transactions in a month.

Once again, you’ll have to enter all the data and information by hand, but once this happens, all the statistics are there for you. Syncing your data to a traditional computer is easy, especially because an onboard user guide is on the application. For those who enjoy comparing, contrasting, and otherwise analyzing their spending history and reported payments, this is probably the download for you.

“Accounts” is another SVTSoftware product with the specific intention of helping people balance their checkbook. I’m a money-man and I hate balancing my checkbook; I suppose about everyone hates balancing their bank account, but “Accounts” helps keeping track of your transaction history with categories and specific accounts labelled. Once again, you’ll need SyncDocs for Windows if you want to back up this information, but if you don’t like sitting at the kitchen table doing this work, this SVT Software helper lets you do it on the train ride or carpool into work in the morning.

Spending and Saving Apps

The Debt Tracker Pro application from SnapTap helps you track your individual loan information, even helping you manage various debts and create a working payoff plan. Not only can you set up separate accounts, but you can use the what-if repayment function to test how quick you can end debt crunch by paying off different levels of principal. Separate features help you various lines of credit you have.

The Grocery Gadget application from Flixoft helps you budget for one of the biggest expenses any family has: your grocery bill. I’m amazed when people tell me they run off to these online coupon sites to find savings so often (a good thing), but then say in the next breath they don’t put pen-to-paper (figuratively) and fill out a monthly budget. This iPHone tool helps you do that, though you’ll need to enter dollar amounts manually for 2G and earlier. Definitely get the 3G or later option, if you can. Grocery Gadget is expensive at $4.99, but well worth the outlay.

MoneyPass ATM Locator by LocaterSearch is a mixed blessing, I’ll admit. Being charged bank fees for out-of-location ATM charges is a curse and I’ve written about reducing your expenses by cutting out this kind of unnecessary transaction fee, but sometimes in the real world you forget and get caught out and need that influx of cash. This tool helps you find those ATM, including surcharge-free Automated Teller Machine.

Better Budgeting through Tech Upgrades

These personal finance apps should work with smartphones from most of the leading manufacturers, including Samsung, Motorola, Nokia, HTC, LG, and Sony-Ericcson. Whether you’re on the right or left side of the Atlanic Ocean and use T-Mobile, Vodafone, Virgin Mobile, O2, Orange, or 3 Mobile, these application downloads should fit your device and service plan. If not, I suggest you continue to research and have device support for your efforts to get control of your finances. These personal finance upgrades are cheap, simple to use, and make your life easier.

Unfortunately, when people use leverage programs in an extreme way, it’s likely to cause big trouble for mortgage buyers. With that warning about overdoing your property purchases through leveraging, I want to discuss several types of leveraged buys that might work for you.

Each one of these home buying options is designed for a specific type of borrower. While the GEM might be perfectly suited for a young husband and wife, it would be a perfect disaster for an older couple. While the RAM might make excellent sense for a pair nearing retirement, it wouldn’t even be possible for most younger people.

In each case, leverage is used to extract the most value out of the mortgage possible, while letting you place the burden  of paying back the loan at just the right time for you and your spouse.

Growing Equity Mortgage

The growing equity mortgage or GEM is a 20-year to 30 year mortgage which starts off with low monthly payments. As the years pass, the mortgage payment increases somewhere between 3% and 7.5% per year. As time goes by, the GEM begins to pay off the principal, so that the mortgage is often paid off in 12 to 13 years.

The GEM plan is meant for people who can’t pay much now, but have good prospects of paying bigger money later. This works for young professionals just out college who should rise rapidly in their career, but might have large debt from the student loan process or starts out at a low wage. Others this is tailor made for include first-time home buyers who need help qualifying, or young married couples with expenses from weddings or childbirth.

Graduated Payment Mortgage

Graduated payment mortgages are a little bit like the GEM in that they start out low and graduate to higher payments in later years. But where the GEM continues to grow over the life of the mortgage, the GPM grows over a 5 to 10 year period and then becomes a fixed mortgage.

The one tricky part of the GPM is that interest doesn’t change over time. This means that interest is high from the get-go, so you might end up having more interest added to the loan than you pay off in the early years. In other words, you might have negative amortization. The house payment might put you more in-debt for a time, but it’s wiped out later in the contract.

The GPM loan works for people who can expect a steady, dependable increase in their salary; who plan to be in a home over a long period of time (thus they aren’t reselling the home for less than you owe); for properties in which the property value is expected to increase over the next 5-10 years; who require jumbo loans; or who should have the ability to refinance at a later time. If one of these options applies to you, the GPM might work for your family’s needs and necessities.

Reverse Annuity Mortgage

Imagine you’re a 62 year old who’ll soon be retiring and who paid for your home off a decade ago, but who doesn’t have a lot of money invested for retirement. Then imagine you want to sell your house to pay for your post-career senior years, but you can’t think of leaving your house and don’t see the benefit from renting while you sell the homestead.

The reverse annuity mortgage is an “equity release” program meant for you.

When you take out an RAM, you receive a loan in exchange for the equity on your house. At the same time, you get to remain living in the same house while receiving payments in the form of a credit line account, a monthly cash advance, a flat sum payment per month, or some combination of all of these offers. One stipulation is this must be the primary home of the mortgagors and the mortgage program is paid out on one home only.

The most familiar RAM loan are those offer by the Home Equity Conversion Mortgage you’ll find offered by HUD and the Homekeeper Mortgage offered by Fannie Mae. The HECM loan is FHA insured. The loan doesn’t have to be paid back as long as you continue to live in the residence. As soon as the last living resident dies, moves away permanently, or sells the home, the full amount of the loan and its interest must be paid. This means the estate of a person also goes to pay off these loans.

Using Leveraged Lending Programs

These are just three of the ways to use leverage in a home to give you more options for buying or using the property fully. Each program is designed for specific types of home owners. These might be perfectly awful ideas for most homebuyers, but if you fall into one of the mortgage borrower categories described above, these leveraged loan programs might be perfect for your budget situation.

Though property, auto, and life insurance hasn’t increased at that rate, insuring yourself, your property, and your family’s well-being in case of tragedy is sometimes outrageous, too. So I wanted to give a list of short tips for saving on your monthly insurance bills.

When it’s time to buy new policies, look at company ratings, the size of premiums, and the deductibles closely. Research policies yourself on your own time, then ask questions you know the answers to already. This way, you’ll learn what the agent knows and what they’re hiding from you. Trust, yet verify–that’s my policy.

Those are general rules for getting better insurance at a lower price. Here are specifics that can save you hundreds of dollars per year and tens of thousands of dollars over your lifetime of being insured.

Raise the Deductibles

This amounts to making a bet on whether you’re going to need your insurance often, but if you have reasonably good chances of avoiding needing to pay the deductibles, you can save hundreds of dollars this way. This is especially true on new cars or renter’s policies.

Comparison Shop on Car Insurance

Competition is fierce when it comes to car insurance these days, so comparison shop yourself. Don’t let your insurance agent do all the work, because you’re accepting what they tell you on faith. That goes double if you decide to shop online; don’t just trust some quote given to you by an online search box.

Check rates for several companies in your area. Even devoting a little time to research reduces the cost of your automobile insurance for months and years to come.

Pay Annual Rates Instead of Monthly Rates

Every time you pay your bill, a transaction fee is assessed. These add up over the course of the year. If you have the financial wherewithal and/or discipline to save up for the yearly payment, pay your insurance by the year–not the month. Avoiding service charges is one way to get ahead in this world.

Store Heirlooms in a Safe Deposit Box

If you have family heirlooms, keepsakes, and other valuables, store them in a safe deposit box in the local bank. When you store in the safe deposit box, the cost of insuring these items is greatly reduced. Also, the home safe is great, but if a fire strikes you home, many of the finer things in the safe still won’t survive–at least in the form you would want them.

Choose Replacement Cost Policies

One way to spend a little bit now and save a whole lot later is getting a replacement cost policy. This replaces your household items and other valuables if something should happen. If fires, flooding, or similar situation causes damage to your stuff, the company pays the full price–not depreciated price–for your belongings. If you go through one of these crises, don’t have to spend your own cash to refurbish your home, too.

Renters Insurance Is Inexpensive

The rental equivalent is the renters policy, where you insure all the home furnishings and other belongings in your apartment or rental home. Get this coverage, because it’s cheap and you don’t want to have to replace eveything yourself.

Avoid Nursing Home Coverage

Many companies scare the elderly into getting a nursing home policy and I think it’s despicable. While this no doubt helps some, most of the time it’s a waste of money. Shame on agents for scary old folks into buying policies they don’t need.

Get Discounts for Alarms and Security Systems

Get the smoke alarms and the security cameras you need and want, then ask your agent about what discounts your provider offers for these installments. Don’t ask beforehand and decide to install based on the amount of discount provided, because you need these helpful home safety devices, either way.

Avoid Dread Disease Coverage

Many insurers offer special high-priced coverage for diseases like cancer or rare scenarios, such as dying in a foreign country. Unless you expect to be traveling in exotic countries a lot–and especially in dangerous locales inside those foreign lands–I wouldn’t worry about it. This is something you can control. Insurance firms often play on fears when they try to sell coverage.

Don’t Buy Air Travel Policies

Another way to waste money is to buy air travel insurance. You might as well be buying coverage for lightning strikes and meteorites. The chances of your flight having trouble are so low it’s a bad bet to buy this type of plan.

Buy from Highly Rated Companies

Finally, if you’re going to be shopping, buy from the highest-rated companies. This used to be an afterthought, but it’s not anymore. In the days of policy proliferation, it’s important you find those reports which rate providers and only use those with healthy ratings. Otherwise, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment–perhaps financial ruin.

That’s why the United States has remained ahead of Europe and Japan these past decades: we offer bigger payoffs to the people who take risks.

This economic reality goes beyond mere rewards, though. Having more money to invest encourages risks at the front end of the venture, too. People look for simple answers, but economic issues are like everything else in life involving people: they’re complicated. Financial incentives are about giving people greater risks and greater rewards, because both of those give the advantage to the smartest, hardest-working, and best.

When you put more money into the hands of the risk-takers, they have more equity to risk on business ventures. When a person has more equity in a financial endeavor, that person is going to take more risks to see it succeeds. Innovators have more at stake, so they work hard to avoid failure.

They say the best players in sports don’t exert and excel because they enjoy victory so much more, but because they fear and hate losing so much worse. Fearing to fail causes people to make herculean efforts.

Winning is a habit; losing is a habit; but the more you have invested in what you strive for, the more you’ll fear failing.

Creating incentives is a long-term way of increasing the probability something good is going to happen. Most business ventures fail. Visionary projects and creative innovation have a large amount of serendipity to them. You’re trying to put together a jigsaw, but most of the pieces don’t fit together the first try.

The more hands you have trying to piece together the puzzle–and the more dexterous those hands are–the more likely the probabilities work in your favor.

Play the odds and you’re much more probable to succeed than if you try to quell the capitalist spirit with economic equality. That sounds great in theory, but has been proven to be a failure for all of us over the long term.

Doesn’t This Lead to a Boom/Bust Economy?

Yes, we’ll have boom and bust periods in the country’s economic life. It’s better than 10 straight years of slow growth, though. Boom-bust is a whole lot better than bust/bust. That’s what we’re talking about here. Long recessions have a destructive effect on the economy that get worse the longer they last. It’s like having tooth decay or a chronic condition. The longer you delay cleaning out the rot and encouraging the healing process, the more of your body is affected. The economy is like a medical patient right now.

Once we get our finances turned in the right direction, we can worry about avoiding a bust. Right now, let’s get the fire of economic production going.

Should We Encourage the Banks to Spend?

Absolutely. When the banks are hoarding money, they aren’t pouring money into investment or consumption, which are the only two ways to prime the economy: increasing supply or demand. When cash sits in the bank vault, neither of those is happening.

First, laws should be written that force banks to hold more capital. That would mean they would suffer when they lose on loans, meaning they’re going to be more careful about loaning money than they were leading up to 2008. Create an insurance system for these losses that are subsidized by the public, then force one bank to pay more for insurance if they’re accepting riskier loans. Also, raise the visibility of the risk-taking the banks.

Transparency is a key for a market economy. Investors can’t make sound business decisions if they’re being misled by the people and companies they’re investing in. A healthy market is one where the facts are out there and undisputed. You’ll always have risk in the capital markets, but as much effort should be taken as possible to assure the smartest and most insightful investors win.

What about Maintaining a Middle Class?

Everyone agrees we have to protect the “middle class”, but the two parties can’t agree on their definition of what middle class means. Every working American likes to think they’re in the middle class, yet that can’t be if we all agree it’s shrinking. Liberals say the middle class shrank during the Bush years because tax cuts for the rich forced the federal and then state governments to shift the tax burden onto the middle class. Conservatives say Obamacare is nothing more than a clever ruse to place higher taxes on the middle class.

I entirely believe that both sides believe those arguments and cynicism or corruption aren’t driving their motivations. It’s just that the right-wing people believe that helping the bosses grows the middle class, while left-wing people believe that helping the workers grows the middle class. The entire political history of the past 100 years can be explained by that last sentence.

Figuring out how to maintain a middle class is so hard, because the price of health care and insurance is squeezing people who used to have these benefits paid by their life-time employer. With more businesses limiting benefits, they’re pushing the cost onto the public. The more people without insurance get sick, this raises the price for the rest of us. If we can get insurance prices under control, the middle class should be able to take care of itself–again if they’re smart.

That only happens if we continue to grow the economy. When the USA is the leader in innovative thinking, business, and technology, we’ll continue to increase the wealth of the nation.

The industry really has grown leaps and bounds in the past 5 years or so. So today, I wanted to show people how to buy preowned or used furniture online without all the hassles of window shopping or walk-in store locations. I want to talk to those who aren’t computer savvy first, then maybe give some advice for those who don’t want basic info or would prefer to shop for home decor offline.

How To Find Good Deals Online

Before I start, I want to mention to all the shoppers my age (and younger) I’m not computer technician or IT aficionado. Believe me; I still get confused by the technical upgrades that go on all the time on the Internet. I’m not from this millennial generation which had an iPod in their baby crib and grew up with an iPhone in their back pocket.

I consider myself fairly savvy about how people buy and sell things online, but I’m really just an old-fashion personal finance expert. So before I start giving (basic) advice, let me say I’m no computer guru. I know how confusing online commerce can be for those of us who lived most of our lives using rotary phones.

When shoppers start searching for the best furniture online which offers delivery in your area, no-hassle financing, and the selection you want, you’ll need to make targeted searches for exactly what you’re looking for.

Let me give an example of what not-to-do. Let’s say you live in Miami. People often type in “furniture miami” when they start searching, but they should be much more specific about their needs. If you want a day bed, look specifically for day beds. Let the search engine work for you to get laser-pointed information. I’ll give a handful of examples for those who aren’t computer-savvy.

• New York City Preowned Bedding
• Los Angeles Used Bedroom Items
• Chicago Pre-Owned Bunk Bed
• Washington D.C. Casual Dining Discounts
• Houston Counter Height Dining Deals
• Dallas Day Bed Sales
• San Francisco Entertainment Centers
• Philadelphia Formal Dining
• Futons Sold in Boston
• Atlanta Home Office Supplies
• Miami Kids Bed Sales
• Seattle Youth Bedding
• Phoenix Living Room Items
• Occasional Table Sales in Minneapolis

This can apply to any kind of online shopping you do. It doesn’t apply simply to antiques and home decor purchases. Whether you’re renting hotel rooms or automobiles or you’re buying fashion accessories or lollipops, target your searches to get the most accurate information Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Answer.com have to offer. If that doesn’t work for you, I’ll give you some specific places you can shop–either offline or online.

C&Z Preowned in Rochester

C & Z Preowned Used and New in Rochester, New York offers no credit check financing in their walk-in store, along with service to Rochester, Pitsford, Webster, Greece, Penfield, Fairport, Canandaigua, Buffalo, Syracuse, Spencerport, Batavia, Lockport, and smaller towns throughout Upper New York. Chuck Zicari and his staff can sell you office items, sofas, chairs, beds, used bedroom sets, used couches, dining rooms sets, and an inventory of other home furnishings. Delivery is available, along with a consignment program and a sell-back policy.

Those with good (“gently used”) pieces and decor in Rochester, New York should sell their quality goods instead of leaving it sitting. If you happen to be a retiree moving to a warmer city, executives moving or renovating your office, the executor of an estate, or simply a downsizer, consider selling your used home items to this local Rochester business. Financing is available and those driving to the live site should know that plenty of parking is available at their business on 585 Stone Road. Also, remember E&Z is closed on Mondays.

All Furniture By Catalogue

AllFurnitureByCatalogue is an online home furnishing vendor which has been in business since 1991, but since early 2007 has expanded to becoming a leading Internet provider of home decor in the past few years. Located in El Paso, you nevertheless can have purchases shipped to you wherever you are in the continental United States. What’s better, you get what you want with no credit check and no hassles over financing.

So you can order from AFBC and get affordable shipping and financing on your favorite brands. You’ll be able to get what you want in (relatively) nearby Texas cities like Austin, San Antonio, and Houston. You’ll be able to get goods delivered in Dallas, Fort Worth, and Arlington. Heck, AllFurniturebyCatalogue isn’t even some 5-state or adjacent state outfit, where you can buy from New Orleans, Oklahoma City, and Denver. Anywhere in the contiguous states, AFBC delivers. That means people way out west in Sacramento, Riverside, San Diego, and San Jose get shipping delivered. Western cities outside California are also on the list, including Portland, Salt Lake City, and Las Vegas.

People in the Deep South (Texans say that’s anything east of Texas) can get items shipped to Memphis, Nashville, Richmond, Virginia Beach, Birmingham, Raleigh, and Charlotte. Homeowners in Florida can buy and ship online products through AFBC, whether they’re in Jacksonville, Miami, Orlando, or Tampa. If you live in the northeast and you want home furnishings shipped to you, AFBC delivers to Detroit, Baltimore, Hartford, Bridgeport, Providence, Philadelphia, Boston, and even New York City. People in the midwest can get deliveries, whether you’re in Pittsburgh, Detroit, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Chicago, Cincinnati, Columbus, Dayton, or Cleveland. People in the adjoining southern states, including home decorators in Louisville, Kansas City, and St Louis can all take advantage of bad-credit financing and affordable shipping rates.

In short, anyone in the USA should be able to take advantage of these bargains.

McLimans Pre-Owned Furniture

McClimans Warehouse is a brick-and-mortar store at 940 West Cypress Street in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. McClimans also has an online inventory broken into four different categories: bedroom pieces, dining room pieces, living room pieces, and miscellaneous. Their store has been operating in Chester County since 1976 and they have one of the largest inventories in the tri-state area. McClimans offer traditional pieces, antiques, and reproductions.

Used Furniture Gallery – More Deals in Pennsylvania

The Used Gallery is a 12,000 square foot showroom located at 1531 Saw Mill Run Blvd in Pittsburgh, with a second store found at 1500 West Chestnut Street in Washington, Pennsylvania. Delivery is available in the Pittsburgh and Washington areas. The store opens at 10am to 9pm Monday through Saturday, with hours from 11am to 5pm Sunday. Debit and credit cards are accepted, while a lay away program is offered. A rewards program also exists that lets you earn credit towards future home furnishing purchases.

The Elmwood Company

The Elmwood Company specializes in pre-owned Kittinger pieces, including antebellum antiques. Decor in Elmwood online catalog includes beds, chests, cabinets, desks, sideboards, seating, tables, and a reference guide. Search for products listed under Historic Newport, Colonial Williamsburg, Williamsburg Adaptation, Old Dominion, and Richmond Hill. Many of these items are from the Williamsburg® and Kittinger collaboration from 1937 to 1990, when the program created decor that is even found in the White House today. Most reproductions date from this time, and Kittinger products are known for their unquestioned authenticity.

Used Furniture Store

Located in downtown Boston, the UsedFurnitureStore sells online beds, tables, and living room pieces such as the black leather Samuel, the Oakbrook Round, and the Morgan Round from CORT. Not only can you find good deals on-site, but you can find out how to find the best online deals through EverythingFurniture (including kids items), the new Linens-n-Things, and even bedding style for Tommy Hilfiger home products. You’ll also find tips on how to find furnitute items in all of the major American cities. For instance, I found one of the best online retailers I’ve ever found using these links.

Home Decor and Antiques on eBay

Don’t forget to check out the home decor entries on eBay. You’ll find brings like Ethan Allent, Henredon, Hitchcock, Baker, Pennsylvania House, and Kittinger listed. You might have to search through topics like “preowned furniture”, “antiques”, bedrooms”, “cabinet-case goods”, desks, tables, seating, mirrors, or even “retro-modern”, but you’ll be able to pick up incredibly good deals when you shop at eBay. Remember to look for top-ranked sellers when shopping.

In all, I’ve found these are among the four default questions any group of people ask economists and personal finance experts when discussions are opened up for Q&A sessions. These questions and answers should fill in the basic gaps in your knowledge, though I encourage you to give increase your understanding with further reading on each subject.

These questions fall into four categories: interest rates, employer credit checks, collecting unemployment, and when undergoing foreclosure is the right thing to do.

When Are Interest Rates Expected To Rise Again?

Interest rates aren’t likely to rise anytime soon. The idea of our macro economists is to get money flowing again. When you keep interest rates low, money is cheaper, so it should keep that money in the system.

If inflation looked as it were starting to soar, the interest rates would be hiked. That isn’t our problem at the moment, so don’t expect a rate increase in the near future. This means stocks are probably a better investment than a savings account, because you’ll receive almost no growth from saving money in a bank account. The market appears to have righted itself in a fundamental way, so the volatility of past years shouldn’t happen again soon.

Why Does a Potential Employer Do a Credit Check?

People with mounting debts are more likely to embezzle funds or find other ways to steal from the corporation. Also, how you handle your personal finances is a good indication of how you make other decisions in your life. If you’re irresponsible with your money, what else might you be irresponsible with? Your work? What are you spending this excess cash on? Bars and late night lifestyle? Substance abuse? People make value judgments not on your lifestyle choices, but how these might affect you coming into the office at 8am in the morning.

A hiring manager or a CEO can make a lot of guesses based on your credit score. These are educated guesses, not 100% rules. But when you interview 30 people for a job and you’re going off of a few minutes with each, peeping behind the financial curtain is another way to break the tie. Employers are looking for information on you at that point, so a credit check is another way to add to their information database.

The same goes for your Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking pages. If you go on Facebook to complain about your coworkers and former boss, it’s a good assumption you’ll do the same when you join the hiring manager’s company. If you tweet crude, insensitive, or negative things about the people in your life, this boss probably won’t want you corrupting their office with your negativity? If you seem ignorant and ill-mannered when socially networking, you might be ignorant and ill-mannered on the job.

Can You Get Unemployment Even If You Weren’t Fired?

Workers get unemployment when they are laid off through no fault of their own. If your company outsources jobs, moves to another city, downsizes and lays off a bunch of employees, or goes bankrupt and has to do the same, you might get unemployment.

If you’re grossly incompetent and your former employers have evidence of that, you probably won’t get unemployment, even if you were fired. If you quit your job, unemployment doesn’t apply. If your former company had “cause”, you won’t get unemployment.

Is Allowing a Foreclosure a Smart Thing To Do?

No, don’t go into foreclosure if you can help it. When you have a foreclosed house on your credit history, your credit score is likely to go in the basement. The same goes for bankruptcy. You’ll be dealing with bad credit for 7 to 10 years when choosing one of these remedies.

Don’t get me wrong: sometimes default is the only option. If it is, understand that’s the case and you could do no more. If you can avoid delinquency and (eventually) default, do it. Try to keep your house, because it’s value will rise with time. With the low interest rates now, refinance with a lower interest rate if you can’t make the payments or it doesn’t make ecocnomic sense. Better yet, use the Obama loan modification program to lower your house payments. If neither of these options work, look into selling the house short. When this happens, you sell the house for less than it was worth and you work out the difference with the bank. Sometimes the bank takes part of the loss, limiting your own losses. Once you’re out of the house, either rent or buy a much more affordable residence.

Provocative Economic Q&A Session

I was originally going to term this piece “Provocative Financial Questions and Their Answers”. “Provocative” might sound like a strange word for a credit website, but the term only means “to provoke”. These do get you thinking about how macro-economics affects you life, how financial traditions come about, and how personal finance affects your everyday life–especially your job or career.

There’s the rub; your finances affects every aspect of your life: home, job, family, friends, romance, and entertainment. Money can’t buy you contentment and happiness, but it gives you more options than otherwise. That’s what you want as you get older and, hopefully, have more financial resources.

The world is all-too-aware of the many financial, economic, and budgetary problems Wall Street, the US government,  and the American people face in the coming years. Because of our two-party system and freedom of the press allowing for both parties’ viewpoints to be expressed ad infinitum, most people who want to know about flaws in the American economy have heard about them a long time.

Problems exist in any country; we just don’t know about them as much when you only hear one point-of-view about certain of those countries. While certain information is discernible, it’s not as out in the open as it might be in a western democracy. The People’s Republic of China is one of those examples.

The issues China faces in the coming decade or two are large. In fact, some notable experts believe the flaws and weaknesses are so inherent in the current Chinese system that it’s hard to see these problems being resolved in any meaningful fashion in the time needed to make them work.

In no particular order, these issues include (1) population issues, (2) social unrest, (3) corrupt officials, (4) lack of innovation, (5) 20th century economic planning, and (6) economic gravity.

Chinese Population Concerns – Within the next few years, China will become the oldest country in the history of the world (demographically). In the second half of the 20th century, China had a population explosion the likes of which had never been seen on Earth. As the population reached 1.2 billion, measures were taken to limit growth. Families were encouraged to have one child, so the population might eventually shrink.

But when the population curve starts to turn down, that means you’ll eventually have a smaller percentage of people working age and a rapidly aging population. The USA is dealing with a rapidly aging population now that Baby Boomers are reaching retirement age. Think about the concerns that Americans have over social security, medicare, and medicaid. Then multiply those by a factor of 5 or 10 to understand the problem China is going to face in the next few years.

Major Social Unrest – The United States might seem to have two warring sides between blue states and red states and the Mainstream Media and FoxNews factions, but both sides view themselves as Americans. From Alaska to Florida, from Maine to California, Americans believe in their Union. It’s not even debated (though Hawaiians and Puerto Ricans might disagree with that statement). In China, you have major regions that don’t want to be Chinese, including Tibet and Xiangxiang in the west. Beyond that, China has to figure out a way to incorporate its radical socio-economic changes into their political system. The idea with free market enterprise is its spreads wealth, therefore spreading power.

• Will the major business interests in Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Macao be content with no political voice? Is there a point they ever decide the communist party officials are corrupt and repetitive?

I suppose authoritarian regimes and capitalism have worked hand-in-hand before, but most people would describe China is a totalitarian state. Internal unrest may not be insurmountable, but the concerns are far greater than they are in a representative government. It’s an axiom that democratic governments can survive being unpopular, but authoritarian ones cannot. What happens if the flower ever comes off the current economic growth pattern?

Corruption – Corruption exists in every country, but it’s not so endemic in many lands as it is in China. The recent commentary by the Chinese media about the U.S. ambassador’s decision to fly coach underscored that even the lowliest communist official feels the need to live lavishly and show off their wealth.

• In a country where economic thought is encouraged and Marxist orthodoxy isn’t held as inviolate as it once was, will the divide between the conspicuous consumption of the political elite and the humble hard work of everyone else remain off-limits?
• All countries have elites, of course, will the economic elite and the political elite be able to remain in lock-step with one another?

Usually when two centers of power emerge, a certain rivalry exists.

Lack of Innovation – In the Information Age, the spirit of innovation, invention, and entrepreneurship are more important than they ever were. In the modern world these past 500 years or so, a superpower not only leads through economic force, but through the power of ideas and cutting edge technology.

• Can China step up and become the purveyor of new ideas that Europe and America have been these past centuries? Will Chinese technological advances be able to eclipse those of all others?

To do so, their leaders will need to encourage independent thought.

Outdated Economic Model – It’s been said before that India has developed towards a 21st century information economy, while China’s growth has been towards a 20th century industrial economy. The Soviet Union’s major downfall was its reliance on heavy industry, because that was the quickest way to modernize and arm itself in case of invasion. But the Soviets were always behind the West in ideas, perhaps because of their philosophy of materialism.

• China was smarter than the Soviet Union in embracing enterprise instead of a purely state-planned economy, but did the economic growth come in the wrong fields?
• Is China going to find itself one century behind? What happens when growing Chinese prosperity undercuts their industrial base (like it did in America) and the rest of the developing world offers cheaper labor than they do?
• Can the government manipulate the currency to forestall that and, if they do, will the people stand for it?
• Is the Information Age overrated and is China smart in maintaining an industrial base, unlike the United States? If so, will the next step of development be towards a growing information sector?
• Can a government which severely restrict freedom of information and freedom of speech ever develop a truly dynamic information economy?

These are all questions that have to be answered before we know who chose right: China or India.

Economic Gravity – Finally, the kind of economic growth China has had has been unsustainable throughout human history. It’s like gravity; eventually, things fall back to Earth. At some point, China’s economic growth at a 10% rate is bound to slow down. Remember back in the 1980s, when everyone was concerned the Japanese were going to become the next economic superpower and were going to “buy America”? That proved to be paranoia on the part of the right, though it did help destroy the labor movement in the US by giving reasons why corporations needed to get more efficient (to compete with the Japanese zaibatsu). Unless something unprecedented happens (and it might), the growth of China is likely to slow down–and probably in the next few years.

• But if the economic boom starts to slow to something more in line with the rest of the leading nations, does that exacerbate all the problems above?

More Discussion of This Subject

If you want to study this question further, start with this clip from the Munk Debates. In this particular Munk Debate, Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and CNN’s Fareer Zakaria took on British historian and Harvard professor Niall Ferguson and Chinese economist David Daokui Li on whether the 21st century would belong to China, as the 20th century was the “American Century”. Just so you’ll know beforehand, the crowd was polled at roughly half apiece on “yes” or “no” on this question, with about 25% were swayed in favor of Kissinger’s and Zakaria’s position by the end of the debate–though both sides scored points.

Niall Ferguson and David Daokui Li took the position that China would become a superpower and surpass the United States in (first) economic and (then) geopolitical power worldwide, while Henry Kissinger and Fareed Zakaria took the position that China would not become a superpower, because of various social, political, economic, and technological shortcomings. They further took the position that China and America would settle into the kind of equilibrium I discuss at the end of this page. Obviously, they’ve convinced me, though I take the position that leadership could have a tremendous impact on how China’s and America’s relationships with each other–and the world–develop in the next 10 to 20 years.

USA and China Achieve Equilibrium

I’ve read books about the restoration of a multi-polar world (including Niall Ferguson’s) where more nations around the globe than just the United States are important in a geopolitical sense. The fact is, that’s never changed, though perceptions have.

Even after the end of the Cold War, the USA was never the only nation that mattered. In a globalized world where the European Union represents and has represented a larger economic combine than the US, we’ve never dominated as much as we thought we did. China will continue to grow and have problems. The United States will continue to grow and have problems. Eventually, we’ll achieve some kind of equilibrium as equals in a smaller world.

1. Adjust your thermostat. Your air conditioning and heating systems are probably your biggest source of electricity use. In the summer, set your air conditioner on 80. In the winter, set the thermostat to 60. You WILL save money on your electric bill, guaranteed. You can make up the difference in temperature by changing the amount of clothing you wear.
2. Turn off the lights. Why spend money lighting up a room when no one is in it? For that matter, during the daylight hours, use as much natural light as possible. You don’t have to sit around in the dark, but there’s no point in having every light bulb in every room of your house burning all the time.
3. Turn off your computer. Your computer uses more electricity than you think.
4. Shop around. The electric company you’re using now may or may not be the only game in town. See if you can get a better rate on your electric bill from a different company, and if you can save money by switching, then switch.
5. Unplug your appliances. Did you know that even when they’re not turned on, appliances that are plugged into the wall still use electricity? The amount is drastically lower than it would be if the appliance were on, but over 365 days a year, it can add up. So if you’re not using a given appliance, unplug it.
6. Do your laundry at night. You’ve got central air. Using the dryer during the day, when it’s hot, makes the air conditioner work harder to maintain the same temperature. If you do your laundry at night, after the sun has gone down and the temperature has dropped, you’ll use less electricity keeping the house cool when you’re doing the laundry.
7. Insulate. I used to live in a 1700 square foot home with lousy insulation. My electric bill was never less than $400 in a month, mostly because of the air conditioning unit. I now live in a 4000 square foot home, but it’s energy efficient and well insulated. I’ve never had an electric bill over $300 in the three years I’ve lived here. That’s a massive change in annual expenditure, and it would be even more dramatic if I had a smaller home.

You can find other ways to lower your electric bill, too. Investing in solar panels or a windmill is an option, but you have to consider the cost of doing so versus what using power from the electric company would be over the life of the solar panels or the windmill.

Since there are three sides to this equation, I’ll discuss on this page how social lending works from the perspective of the lenders, borrowers, and the company website which hosts the community of both. While you might wonder whether these companies are legit or whether they can make money hosting microfinance networks, you’ll come away wondering why you didn’t think of this idea yourself and start your own peer-to-peer lending sites.

Social Lending Site Business Models

It’s hard to talk about the archetypal one of these sites, because Prosper, Lending Club, and Weemba all have much different business plans. I’ll discuss what each has in common to give you an idea of the basics, but know that each has as many deviations from the model as commonalities. For instance, We3mba doesn’t arbitrate disputes, but simple introduces borrowers to lender and lets them work out the details offsite. On the other hand, Lending Club focuses on debtors with top quality credit ratings.

That isn’t to say all three of these successful companies don’t have a similar vetting process, so let’s get to the basics. A social lending business sets up an online interface so two different groups of people can meet and talk about unsecured business and personal loans. They attract a community of lenders (investors) and a community of debtors or borrowers.

Social Lending Rates and Rating

Next, the site separates out those borrowing into a various categories. Each has their own rating system, but the ratings come down to somewhere between 4 and 7 different levels. At the top are the borrowers with the highest credit rating, who get a top grade. At the bottom are those with a bad credit rating. In each case, a fairly standard background check is performed to assess your credit worthiness.

Nobody gets denied access to the lending services. Nobody has a face-to-face meeting with someone. Instead, your account is categorized. This category determines what kind of loan rates you’ll have on the website. The better you’re rated, the lower your interest rate. The worse you’re rated, the higher the APR.

Next, your profile is posted on the website, almost like it would be on an online dating website. Also like an online singles community, potential matches are allowed to browse your profile and determine if they’re interested. In this case, their interest is in giving you a loan. If they are, they offer you an amount and you can either accept or decline. The rates and terms and determined by the site’s lending policies and which category you’re in.

Who Offers the Microloans?

Some sites have big lenders who might give you all the money you need for your business, education, medical, or other personal needs. Other sites allow multiple people to offer you small loans, in which case they’re considered microloans or crowd-sourced financing. In either case, you’re receiving money from other private citizens and not a big financial institution, so this is considered peer-to-peer or person-to-person financing. Microfinance are also called p2P loans.

When it’s time to pay off the loan, you pay up. If you don’t, terms kick in which increases the amount you owe, just like you would if you were delinquent with a bank loan. The website assures you pay the investor. If you default, it’s reported to the credit reporting agencies and your credit score takes another hit. Obviously, you won’t be making more loans at that web address until you pay your debts.

How Sites Make Their Money

The social lending sites hosting this activity and enforcing rules is paid a fee to do so. Therefore, these sites don’t make loans themselves, but assure the debtors pay their creditors. The whole process works much like the seller ratings on eBay or Amazon, where someone engaged in these financial transactions gains a reputation from feedback and loan history on the site.

The fees charged by the host are small, usually in the 1% to 3% range. This is how they make their money and how the business model works. For their troubles, they offer services like background checks on borrowers and bill collection for defaulters.

How Social Lending Works for Investors

In other words, a site like LendingClub or Prosper helps a private individual with some money to invest in unsecured loans get into the business of finance and moneylending. Instead of having to learn how to perform background checks on potential debtors and find ways to force them to pay back loans, one of these sites does that for you. Instead, you browse through the loan applications and decide which ones to fund. You make your money on the interest they pay on top of paying off the original debt.

How Microfinance Works for Borrowers

For the people borrowing dollars, you don’t have to go to the bank for a loan application. You can be accepted or denied in the relative anonymity of the Internet. You can get money to launch a small business, expand your entrepreneurial venture if you’ve already got one started, pay for your medical bills, car repairs, or college courses, or just about anything else you might need funding for. What’s more, you’ll get this money at cheaper loan rates than you would at most banks.

Why Does This Business Model Work?

As you can see, this is a win-win-win proposition. The reason this is a good deal for all three parties to the financing is the fact a lot of the overhead of the conventional banking system is avoided. Social lending business models work for the same reason Amazon works. When you cut out several middle-men, you have a leaner business model and profits are easier. Since none of the people involved in these financial transactions have to employ a building full of executives, loan officers, bank tellers, accountants, and other such people, they can take their share and still offer cheaper loans than a bank does.